The Liability Gap

Courts have been tightening their grip on conducted energy devices for years. The question now facing security agencies isn’t whether the trend will continue, it’s what to put in the gap it’s leaving behind.

A device called BolaWrap has been quietly accumulating a track record that answers at least part of that question. Since entering the market in 2020, it has recorded a strong field success rate with zero deaths, zero serious injuries, and zero federal lawsuits. That record is worth understanding, especially as civil liability exposure around Tasers continues to grow.

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The legal pressure on conducted energy devices (CEDs) didn’t arrive overnight. It was built through a series of federal court decisions that progressively narrowed the circumstances in which deploying a Taser is legally defensible.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals drew a clear line in Armstrong v. Pinehurst, 810 F.3d 892 (4th Cir. 2016). The court held that CED use is excessive unless there is an immediate threat to officers or others, ruling that “a rule limiting Taser use to situations involving a proportional safety threat does not countenance use in situations where an unrestrained arrestee, though resistant, presents no serious safety threat.” The case involved a man with cerebral palsy. The judgment made national headlines. Departments took notice.

In the years since, law enforcement agencies across the country revised their standard operating procedures in response to accumulating case law and civil settlements. Many now ban CED use for pain compliance entirely. Others restrict deployment to situations involving an active, immediate threat. The gap between where a Taser was previously authorized and where it can now be legally justified has grown considerably.

Security agencies operate in the same legal environment as law enforcement on use-of-force questions. Civil liability exposure for private security firms tracks these developments closely. The practical question for security directors is: when a Taser is off the table, what replaces it?

The standard non-lethal toolkit has real limitations that the CED debate often obscures. Batons and chemical sprays rely on pain compliance. Empty-hand techniques require physical proximity. For subjects who are pain-tolerant because of mental health crisis, excited delirium, or acute intoxication, pain-compliance tools may simply not work. And when they don’t work, the situation frequently escalates.

CEDs themselves were developed to address exactly this problem. The trouble is that they carry their own failure modes. Two dart probes must both contact the subject’s body and anchor effectively to deliver neuromuscular incapacitation. Heavy clothing defeats them. And the same population that is most likely to require non-lethal intervention, people in psychiatric crisis or under the influence of certain substances, is also most likely to be pain-tolerant and therefore resistant to CED effectiveness.

The result is a population of subjects for whom the standard toolkit offers poor options: tools that don’t work, tools that create liability, or tools that require dangerous proximity.

BolaWrap sidesteps the pain-compliance problem entirely. When an officer activates the device, a .38 blank cartridge fires an eight-foot Kevlar cord with two weighted anchors at 513 feet per second. The cord wraps around the subject’s arms or legs, physically restraining them without delivering any form of electrical shock or pain stimulus. The optimal deployment range is 12 to 20 feet, with a green laser sight to assist targeting.

The restraint mechanism traces its lineage to the bolas used by hunters in South America for thousands of years — a weighted cord thrown to entangle an animal’s legs. BolaWrap has modernized and applied that principle for law enforcement and security use. The company has also launched a drone variant capable of deploying the restraint from greater distances, reducing officer exposure further.

The operational use cases are specific. BolaWrap is suited to situations where a subject is not actively charging but is volatile, non-compliant, and resistant to verbal commands — mental health calls, domestic incidents, confrontations with heavily intoxicated individuals. It is not designed for subjects who are rapidly closing distance on an officer or a third party. That distinction matters for training and deployment policy.

BolaWrap works within a specific operational window, and agencies that deploy it without understanding those boundaries create their own liability exposure. The device can only be used effectively in situations where an officer has time to work through other options and space to deploy it. It is most effective when there is a 10-foot clearance around the person being restrained, which rules out confined spaces and close-quarters confrontations. It is most appropriate when subjects are passively resistant or non-compliant rather than actively combative or presenting weapon threats. A 2020 efficacy and safety report produced by independent consultants for Emergency Protection Ltd identified additional failure conditions: thick or loose clothing, low muscle mass, close range, limited cord spread, and a total miss can all result in a failed deployment. The LAPD, one of the earliest large agencies to pilot the device, also set policies barring its use on pregnant women, the elderly, and children younger than 12. None of these are disqualifying limitations, but they are the basis on which agencies should be writing deployment policy.

The claim that no federal lawsuits have been brought against BolaWrap since its 2020 launch is striking. Scott Cohen, CEO of Wrap Technologies, stated in an October 2025 stockholder letter that BolaWrap has demonstrated “a 92% field success rate with zero deaths, zero serious injuries, and zero lawsuits — a record no other widely used tool in law enforcement can claim.”

Independent reporting broadly supports the performance picture, though with important context. Outlier Media, reporting on the Detroit Police Department’s BolaWrap program in June 2024, cited an 86% success rate based on 224 self-reported uses since 2018, with more than 1,100 agencies now carrying the device. The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in Florida expanded its program three times since launching in July 2021. A 2020 efficacy and safety report commissioned by Emergency Protection Ltd, authored by a use-of-force law specialist, an emergency medicine consultant, and a violence reduction specialist from Broadmoor Hospital, concluded that BolaWrap represents a less injurious restraint option than CEDs.

One caveat applies to all field data: Wrap Technologies estimates that reported deployments account for only around 10% of actual field uses, due to varying department reporting policies. The performance figures should be read in that context. The underlying logic still holds regardless: a restraint device that functions without pain stimulus, without electrical current, and without requiring physical contact removes several of the most common categories of use-of-force litigation from the equation. The absence of a pain compliance mechanism is not just a tactical advantage. It is a legal one.

BolaWrap is not a drop-in replacement for existing tools. It requires specific training to deploy effectively, and that training investment is where agencies most commonly underperform.

The manufacturer offers approximately four hours of initial certification through certified instructors, with annual recertification required. The cost of instructor certification is relatively low. What the manufacturer’s program doesn’t fully cover is the judgment layer — when to deploy, when not to, and how to read the specific circumstances BolaWrap is and isn’t suited for.

Supplementing the manufacturer’s four-hour course with four hours of practical scenario training addresses that gap. Scenario work forces officers to make real-time decisions under simulated pressure, which is where deployment judgment is actually built. Training records and annual recertification logs should be maintained for all officers authorized to carry the device.

The documentation requirement isn’t bureaucratic formality. In a post-incident review or civil proceeding, the training record is evidence of a reasonable standard of care. Agencies that invest in BolaWrap but neglect the paper trail have only solved half the liability problem.

BolaWrap doesn’t replace the broader non-lethal toolkit. It fills a specific operational gap: the space between verbal commands and force options that carry significant injury risk or legal exposure. For subjects who are volatile but not actively attacking, resistant but not immediately dangerous, it offers an intervention that courts are unlikely to characterize as excessive.

Law enforcement agencies that have adopted BolaWrap have reported reductions in Taser deployments. That shift reflects a practical calculation: when a less-litigious option is available and operationally effective, experienced officers tend to default to it.

Security agencies operating in the same legal environment and managing the same categories of difficult subjects have access to the same options. The question is whether their use-of-force frameworks reflect it.

By Kevin R. Madison, JD, CPP, PCI

Kevin R. Madison, JD, CPP, PCI, is a litigation attorney and expert witness in police and security matters, with 40 years of experience in use-of-force cases. He provides expert testimony in civil and criminal proceedings involving law enforcement and private security conduct. This article represents his independent professional assessment.